I know, but we have an early start here. If they’re going to be dairy farmers they might as well get used to it now, that’s the way we look at it.”
Hobbett lived in a depressed-looking cottage just off Cullingoak High Street. Neither he nor his wife were noticeably welcoming to Sloan and Crosby. They were led through into the kitchen. It was not clean. A pile of dirty dishes had been taken as far as the sink but not washed. Parts of both an old loaf and a new one lay on the table with some more dirty cups. There were two chairs by the kitchen grate. Mrs. Hobbett subsided into one of these which immediately demonstrated itself to be a rocking chair. She went backwards and forwards, never taking her eyes off the two policemen.
“Just a few more questions, Hobbett,” said Sloan mildly.
“Well?”
“We’re interested in this key of yours to the Convent.”
“What about it?”
“Where do you keep it for a start?”
Hobbett jerked his thumb over towards the back door. “There, on a hook.”
“Is it there now?”
“You’ve got eyes, haven’t you? That’s it, all right.”
“Is it always there?”
“Except when it’s in my pocket.”
“You never lend it to anyone?”
“Me? What for? Catch people wanting to go in one of them places? Never. And it’s my opinion that some of them that’s inside would a lot rather be outside.”
“Nevertheless, you always lock up before you go every night?”
Hobbett scowled. “Yes, I do, mate. Every night, like I said.”
Sloan was quite silent on the way back to Berebury, and Crosby couldn’t decide whether he was brooding or dozing.
“Hobbett’s the best bet,” said Sloan suddenly.
Brooding, after all. “Yes, sir.”
“He could have got into that garden room without it seeming odd and taken the habit down to the cellar. Then all he has to do is to leave the door unlocked when he goes home.”
“Doesn’t that dragon at the gate—”
“Polycarp.”
“Doesn’t she check up on that door?”
“No need, Crosby. The door from the cellar to the Convent proper is always kept locked. The Reverend Mother said so.”
“Why didn’t he just take the habit, then?”
“Him? Catch him doing anything that’ll lose him that nice soft number of a job he’s got? Don’t be daft. Look at it this way. All he has to do is to shift an old habit from that garden room—or whatever you call it—to his little lobby place. Nothing criminal in that.”
“Then give the key to those lads?”
“Give nothing, man. He just forgets to lock the door, that’s all. Nothing criminal in that, either. ‘Ever so sorry, Sister. It must have slipped my mind. Won’t happen again.’ That’s if they ever get to know, which they stood a good chance of not doing. Besides, that way Tewn, Parker and Whatshisname—”
“Bullen.”
“—Bullen have all the fun of going inside themselves. Much more daring, blast them. Heroes, that’s probably what they think they are. Brave men. They’ve been inside a Convent. Something to tell their grandchildren about. I wonder what Hobbett got out of it?”
“A few drinks?” suggested Crosby.
“And,” said Sloan, still pursuing his own train of thought, “he didn’t think he would be doing any harm because he knew they couldn’t get any further.”
“Because the cellar door was always kept locked,” supplied Crosby. “I say, sir, that’s a point, isn’t it? I mean, who opened the cellar door in the first place?”
Sloan grunted. “We might make a detective out of you yet, Crosby. Who do you think opened it?”
Crosby subsided. “I don’t know, sir.”
“Neither do I,” retorted Sloan briefly. “The important thing is that it was opened from the inside.”
“That narrows the field a bit, sir, doesn’t it?”
“Does it, Crosby?”
“Well, you couldn’t have just anybody walking about inside, could you?”
“No.”
“Well, then, sir…”
“You’re forgetting Caesar’s wife, Crosby.”
Crosby doubled-declutched to give himself time to think. “Who, sir?”
“Caesar’s wife. She was above suspicion.”
12
« ^ »
In the beginning Saturday morning resolved itself into routine.
Harold Cartwright had a large mail delivered to him at The Bull, and spent many more than the usual three minutes on the telephone to London. Mrs. Briggs at the Cullingoak Post Office was hard put to it to keep up with his calls as well as serve her usual Saturday morning customers.
That part of the Agricultural Institute on early call got up and began to go about its business, regretting being born to the land and married to the land, wishing that it led urban lives when it wouldn’t have had to get up early ever and not get up at all on Saturdays.
Life at the Convent proceeded very much as usual. Sister Gertrude woke the Community at the appointed time and they began to work their way through their immemorial, unchanging round. With one difference. Each Sister had to write on a piece of paper her secular name and address, date of profession and precise location immediately after supper on Wednesday evening. Only old Mother St. Therese, to whom all days were the same, found this difficult.
It was routine, too, at the Berebury Police Station to begin with. Superintendent Leeyes sent for Sloan as soon as he got to his office. He was at his worst in the morning. That, too, was routine.
“Seen the papers?” Leeyes indicated a truly sepulchral photograph of Sister Polycarp behind the grille, caught in the camera flash with her eyes shut and mouth open. Under this was a much more sophisticated picture taken from a long distance with a telephoto lens of the outside of the Convent through the trees. The effect was sinister in the extreme.
“Pursuing your enquiries, Sloan, that’s what they say you’re doing.”
“Yes, sir.” Sloan bent over to read the report. He was too good a policeman to scorn any facts newspaper reporters might dig out. Besides, they were free men by comparison—no Judges’ Rules for them.
There wasn’t very much in the paper. The brief news that a nun (unnamed) had died in the Convent of St. Anselm at Cullingoak (short historical note on the Order and its Foundress—see any reference book) once the family seat of the Faines (three paragraphs on the Faine family straight from the nearest Guide to the Landed Gentry), and what they were pleased to call a startling coincidence—the burning of a nun as a guy the very next night—at the nearby Agricultural Institute (run by the Calleshire County Council, Principal, M. Ranby, B. Sc, formerly Deputy Head of West Laming School). Mr. Ranby, said the report, was not available for comment at the Institute yesterday. “Wise man,” thought Sloan. Then followed a highly circumstantial account of the burning of the guy by “a student” who preferred not to give his name. The story wound up with a few generalisations about student rags and the information that an inquest was to be held on Monday morning next in the Guildhall, Berebury. Sloan straightened up.
